Arms, silence, and alignment: The moral and geopolitical cost of India-Israel military ties |
India’s emergence as one of Israel’s most reliable arms partners is not merely a story of defence procurement or strategic pragmatism. It marks a deeper moral and geopolitical shift—one that signals how India’s foreign policy has moved away from ethical positioning and non-alignment toward transactional power alignment, even when that alignment implicates it in grave violations of international law.
For decades, India cultivated a carefully balanced foreign policy identity. Strategic realism coexisted with a rhetorical—and often principled—commitment to anti-colonialism, international law, and Palestinian self-determination. That equilibrium is now visibly fractured. As European governments confront legal challenges, parliamentary resistance, and mass public pressure over arms exports to Israel amid the devastation in Gaza, India has quietly filled part of the vacuum—not only as a buyer of Israeli weapons, but increasingly as a co-producer and supply-chain partner.
This distinction matters. Arms trade is one thing; arms integration is another.
Joint ventures, technology transfers, and domestic manufacturing under the “Make in India” framework collapse ethical distance. When Israeli drones, surveillance systems, or missile components are partially manufactured in India—or when Indian firms supply components to Israeli defence companies—responsibility is no longer abstract. India ceases to be a passive recipient of military technology and becomes embedded in the infrastructure of Israel’s war economy.
Geopolitically, the alignment is justified as realism. Israel offers high-end military technology, battlefield-tested systems, and privileged political access to Washington. India offers scale, manufacturing capacity, diplomatic cover, and a vast, dependable market. The partnership is efficient, mutually beneficial—and profoundly political.
But realism without restraint carries costs.
India’s growing defence intimacy with Israel has coincided with a striking diplomatic silence on Gaza. Abstentions at the United Nations,........